Rumah betang

Central Kalimantan

A rumah betang is a longhouse: one building on tall ironwood posts, with a row of family rooms behind and a single common gallery running along its front. What makes it worth building here is not its shape but its length — or rather the absence of one. It grows by adding bilik one at a time, one for each household, so its length is a census and not a proportion. It is the only building in this project with no characteristic size. The sun in this model is computed for Central Kalimantan, 1.68° S and 113.38° E.

The shortfall most worth stating is not about dimensions. “Dayak” is a name for many peoples across Borneo speaking many languages, and their longhouses are not one building: Iban, Kenyah, Ngaju and Ot Danum houses differ in plan, in material and in practice. The terms on this screen lean Ngaju and Ot Danum. A single rule pack quietly averaging a dozen traditions into one “Dayak house” would be doing exactly what this project exists to refuse — so this pack states its lean and does not pretend to stand for the whole. Beyond that: the cap of twenty households on the control is a limit of the model and not of the building; there is no carving at all; and not one figure here comes from a measurement.